MOOC maps Leicester City’s historic win

The University of Leicester, De Montfort University, Leicester City Football Club and FutureLearn to offer online course exploring football origins, fandom, politics and the effect of the club’s historic 2015/16 season.

In 2016, football fans from all over the world celebrated as Leicester City Football Club completed one of the most remarkable stories in the history of English football. The club won the Premier League title – despite being written off as relegation candidates at the start of the season when bookmakers made them 5000-1 outsiders to be crowned champions.

Now, in a new free online short course called ‘English Football: a Social History‘, learners can find out all they need to know about the history of the game and Leicester City Football Club’s extraordinary success in the 2015/16 Premier League season.

The free online course, delivered by the University of Leicester and De Montfort University, in association with Leicester City Football Club, is available for enrolment now and starts on 29th January on the FutureLearn social learning platform.

Learners will cover the origins of football, early fandom, politics and the role of the media in its recent cultural and economic transformation. They will also be able to share their views throughout the course, helping to explore the role football plays in their lives and what the sport really means to them.

This course offers an analysis of some of the ways in which the game has changed over time, for players, managers and fans

The course combines the expertise of football academics from the University of Leicester’s Unit for Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement (DICE) in the School of Media, Communication and Sociology and the International Centre for Sports and Culture (ICSHC) in the School of Humanities at De Montfort University. It will also draw on the expertise of Leicester City Football Club’s Historian, John Hutchinson, to provide a unique insight into the background of the club and the remarkable 2016 season.

John Williams, Co-Director of DICE and Associate Professor in the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester said: “The course is designed for anyone interested in the history and social impact of football. We draw on our sociologists’ expertise on fan culture, local football and local identity construction through sport, and their views of the new global and commercial landscape of professional football in Europe. We’re also thrilled to be able to glean insight from DMU whose historians, including John Hutchinson, historian and archivist at Leicester City Football Club, have written widely on the game’s history, including its changing social and cultural status, both in the UK and globally.”

Dr Neil Carter, from the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, added: “English football has undergone a number of key social and economic transformations since the birth of the sport in the late nineteenth century. This course offers an analysis of some of the ways in which the game has changed over time, for players, managers and fans. The formation of the Premier League seemed designed to favour the richer clubs – until Leicester City challenged that view.”

Learners can join the course for free, or can upgrade for £32 to receive additional benefits.

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